Canada's banking system is famously concentrated: six banks hold most of the country's deposits. Now those same six want to share a single blockchain to move that money.

On September 22, BNN Bloomberg reported that BMO, CIBC, National Bank, RBC, Scotiabank and TD are jointly exploring a system for tokenized Canadian-dollar deposits. According to The Block, the first phase focuses on moving tokenized deposits efficiently between financial institutions, and the network could later open to other deposit-takers.

It's early. "It's really exploratory now," Claire Célérier, a finance professor at the University of Toronto, told BNN Bloomberg. No launch date has been announced.

What is a tokenized deposit?

It's an ordinary bank deposit recorded on a blockchain-style ledger instead of only in the bank's internal database. The money is still a claim on a regulated bank. What changes is how it moves: transfers can settle in seconds, run 24/7, and carry programmable conditions, such as releasing payment only when a shipment is confirmed.

That's the key difference from a stablecoin, which is issued by a separate company and backed by a reserve of assets, not by a bank's balance sheet.

The regulator already weighed in

Earlier in September, Canada's bank regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), said tokenized deposits are not legally different from traditional ones. "The underlying technology of a financial product or service does not determine its legal nature," OSFI said, as reported by The Block.

Canada has tested the plumbing, too. In March 2026, Project Samara, involving the Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada, RBC and TD, settled a tokenized government-agency bond on a blockchain platform.

The U.S. version is already underway

America's biggest banks are on a similar path. Forbes reported in July that JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo are building a shared tokenized-deposit network through The Clearing House, the bank-owned payments company, with a target launch in the first half of 2027. The early customers are multinational corporations, not households.

The motivation on both sides of the border is the same: stablecoins. Forbes put stablecoins in circulation at roughly $263 billion at the time. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has warned that "upwards of $6 trillion" in deposits could eventually migrate to stablecoins, according to the same report. Deposits are the cheapest money banks have to lend, so losing them would hurt.

U.S. law gives banks a head start here. The GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, created a licensing regime for payment stablecoins but left tokenized deposits outside it, so they stay on bank balance sheets under existing bank rules.

Why it matters

Banks are rebuilding their core plumbing on blockchain-style rails, not to sell digital tokens to the public, but to keep money inside the regulated banking system as payments get faster and always-on.

For businesses, that could mean payments that settle on weekends and holidays, and fewer days of cash stuck "in transit." For consumers, the effect will come later and mostly out of sight, in faster transfers and new payment features built on top. Open questions remain, including how deposit insurance applies to tokenized balances. Canada's deposit insurer has not explicitly addressed it, according to Tech Times.

What to watch

Whether Canada's banks name a technology partner and timeline, whether The Clearing House stays on track for 2027, and whether U.S. regulators issue guidance treating tokenized deposits the way OSFI did.

Sources: BNN Bloomberg · The Block · Forbes · Tech Times

Beyond the Bank is for informational purposes only and is not financial, legal, or investment advice.

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